


The darkest nights, the coldest days

by JeySilence



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Gen, POV Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24143356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeySilence/pseuds/JeySilence
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 9
Kudos: 9





	The darkest nights, the coldest days

Bucharest was, by every meaning of the word, not a very welcoming city at first. Rough and jagged, with massive empty buildings. Rundown neighbourhoods. The remnants of a broken past. A broken city, for broken people. Which was precisely what Bucky Barnes was. The shadow of a person. The silhouette of man. 

In the cold air of the Balkan winter, images of the many lives of Bucky flashed nonstop in his thoughts, trying to escape the drug induced haze he had been in the last 60 or so years. A flat in New York City in the 30s. The war. A hangar in Siberia. And always, always, the horrors of Hydra, which never failed to wake him up drenched in cold sweat in the dead of night. 

American born and Soviet made, he had trouble remembering who he really was when so much of his life had been shaped by wars. So many different ones, yet always the same. He managed to have good days here, when the sun shone on Bucharest and the Romanian he had been taught – no, not taught, that was too soft a word, implying of willingness. The Romanian he had been hardwired with when Hydra remade him over and over came out soft-spoken in his low voice. But there were other days when everything and everyone seemed to scream. Mostly himself though. 

And sometimes, for a blessed, rare minute, other memories came to him. Of a time before Germany, Siberia, or Romania. When life was so much easier. Drinks, dances. Spending too much money on a stupid gift for a girl, probably long dead now. The fireworks on the 4th of July. A train ride with Steve Rogers. Always Steve Rogers, always sending him in hours of confusion and unrest. He remembered this part of his life as you remember a movie, as if it happened to someone else. With the storylines blurring over time. 

But Steve Rogers was always in every bit of his scattered memories. New York. Nazi Germany. Washington. Always Steve Rogers. Only problem was that 60 years of Hydra torture had made him forget all about Steve Rogers until two years ago when Bucky pulled him out of the Potomac river. Maybe he had started to remember back then, the fog shrouding his mind lifting a little. It was mostly confusion. It was still almost impossible to untangle his real fragments of memories from what he had been made to think about the guy. That he was his enemy. 

Bucky started becoming nervous and looked outside the window. The snow had started to fall. Good. The sharp cold made him focus, more grounded. He grabbed his jacket and pulled the sleeves as far down as he could to hide his metal arm – another Hydra horror – and went outside. The night had fallen, the sky was pitch black. He loved the winter nights of Bucharest, when the city took on an eerie look, almost unreal. A city for people out of place and time, just like him. 

The streets of the Romanian capital were never empty. Always an organised chaos of men outside bars, randomly inviting you for palinka, which Bucky had indulged in quite a few times. Old Romani women begging in the streets, stopping you at streetlights and gazing straight into your eyes, seeing right through you to your very soul, and predicted your fortune. He wasn’t sure he believed in their magic, but he respected it. Every time they tried their trick on him and looked into his green eyes, they almost immediately took a step backwards and clutched the cross on their neck, muttering a prayer in Romani. Maybe they really did see. He always smiled at them and paid them generously, buying steaming hot cups of tea for them in the coldest days, like this one was. Remembering manners from another time, another life. 

As messy and chaotic as Bucharest first came across, he had found a semblance of home here, a sense of belonging when he ran away erratically from the USA and started a long trip through the heartland of Europe. France and Italy which brought him back to the war too much. Slovenia, where he had almost been killed by a bear. Croatia, where he went to the beach for the first time in ages. Serbia. And finally, Bucharest where he laid his weary soul to rest. Men in bars had told him that the countryside was much more beautiful. So, he went once, to Transylvania and a little place nestled in the mountains called Sighisoara. He rode his motorcycle up the country and walked in the forest on his own. The silence had been deafening to him, giving him too much room for the thoughts he so desperately tried to escape from. But it was beautiful though, so beautiful he had felt out of place. The noise of city was where he had found a sense of serenity and safety in his hiding. He had to keep his mind busy to avoid being consumed by his thoughts. 

Since he pulled Steve Rogers out of the river and fled, watching over his shoulder had became second nature. But with nothing dragging him back to either one of his previous lives, he had started feeling a bit more like a real person. Finding himself back from under the many things he failed at making sense of, tiny bit by tiny bit. He came back to his place, which was really just a tiny room in a dodgy part of the city. It actually suited him. First, he had no money to his name, second, he didn’t need much anyway. He opened the door and froze in place. 

“Do you know who I am?” The voice was solemn and unwavering. He was looking straight at Bucky, tracking any change of expression, any movement.   
The friend, the enemy. The soldier. The hero.   
“You’re Steve Rogers.”   
It was almost surprising to hear himself speak English. It came out hoarse and rough, unused for a long time. ‘You’re Steve Rogers’ was really all the sense he could make of the man standing in his room, of them and why he saved him from drowning. Anything else he could think of threatened to send his mind in a dangerous frenzy. If Steve Rogers, whoever he was to Bucky, was here, that was not something he could afford right now.   
“I read about you in a museum.”


End file.
